Aronofsky's "Noah": A modern Jewish midrash

WARNING:  CONTAINS SPOILERS!

I missed this movie when it was in the theaters, because it came out right in the middle of cleaning for Passover, so I had to wait for the DVD.  Meanwhile, I had read dozens of reviews by both Jews and gentiles.  The Christians hated it.  The Jews loved it.  And one thing became very obvious:  Never has a movie so clearly illustrated the vast difference between how Jews and Christians read the Bible.  One could build a whole course in Jewish-Christian dialogue based on this movie. 

Having now viewed the film twice, I want to address this difference. Christians tend to see the Bible as the be-all end-all of scripture.  If it's not in the Bible, it isn't real, it's mere fiction, even heresy.  Jews, however, have a vast oral tradition as well as the Written Torah. There is a  process of interpretation called "midrash" which means literally "from searching." In Judaism to "search the Scriptures" does not mean "thumb through your Bible," it means to search out hidden or implied meanings, sometimes with imagination, ("visualization" might be a better, more spiritual word) in order to get a better understanding of the story.  This process is not heresy; it is the soul of Judaism.

An example of this would be the ancient (dating to at least the Roman period) midrash of "How did God create the world? He wrapped Himself in a robe of light and it began to shine." (see Genesis Rabba 3:4, based on Psalm 104:2).  Now obviously nobody was there to see that happen, we don't really know if it even DID happen that way -- but it is a way of visualizing the Creation process without the "Finger of God" in the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  (Which, BTW, is ALSO a form of midrash, since Michelangelo was not there at Creation, either.   And technically it is not accurate, since Genesis says God "breathed in" the soul of Adam so literally it should look more like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, right? But that would not have made a very good painting.)

What Aronofsky has done -- and other rabbis besides me have already called it this -- is to create a modern midrash.   He did what Jews have done for thousands of years:  He fleshed out the bare bones of the story to explore it in the light of his own generation, a generation concerned with pollution, climate change, extinctions, the fear of global destruction.  Those themes were always there, but past generations did not focus on them in the same way because not until modern times was there the possibility that we really could destroy the Earth.  Suddenly this part of the story becomes much more relevant.

Regarding Noah's "nervous breakdown" depicted in the movie, We do not KNOW what went on among the family members on the Ark -- the Bible does not say -- so ANY drama depicted there is fictional in the modern sense.   Previous versions of the Noah story -- both print and in film -- have also made up the events aboard the Ark.  The talmudic rabbis say that Noah and his family got no sleep the whole time, because they were busy feeding the diurnal animals by day and the nocturnal ones by night -- and that the predators reverted to drinking milk (from the cattle) as it was in Eden.  That is no more factually probable than putting them to sleep with some sort of herbal anesthesia (as seen in the movie.)   But both versions deal with the very real issue of how so many animals could be kept peacefully in a small space for so long.

Not the children's version! 

So what was Aronofsky's purpose in making this film?  He has stated that the story of Noah has fascinated him since his Hebrew school days (Read more...).  But the "kiddie version" did not go far enough to satisfy him as an adult.  Most of the time, we gloss over the very real horror of millions of people drowning -- not to mention all the animals and plants being wiped out.  Most likely, the raven did not come back because it found plenty of floating carrion to feed on.  (See Genesis 8:7).   But we don't go into that.  We focus, instead, on the cutsie image of lions, tigers, elephants and giraffes on deck, watching the dove come back with an olive branch and a rainbow overhead.  But the reality was much more dark and gritty.

My sense is that Aronofsky wanted to explore that darkness, to delve into the bare emotions of a family who had just witnessed all of humanity die.  He wanted his viewers to really feel that, to experience -- and recoil -- at the horror of it.  The scene in the Ark where Noah tells the Creation story is reminiscent of the scene around the Passover table in DeMille's "Ten Commandments" -- in both cases, they are surrounded by the screams of the dying.

That has to have an effect on a person's psyche.  But the Bible doesn't really deal with emotions or psychology, it is more of a historical narrative.  There is no character development in the biblical narrative.  However, we are a generation steeped in psychology, so we expect more depth in a character than "just the facts, ma'am." (Think about that.  The rather emotionless detectives in "Dragnet" would not be very popular if the show were debuting today.)

I think what disturbs so many people about this movie is that Noah has such a dark misunderstanding about what God wants.  WE would never think God wanted us to kill a baby, would we?   And yet in the story of Abraham He apparently does -- a story that Jews struggle with every year in the liturgical cycle, a story that has generated VOLUMES of midrashic explanations as Jews confront the Abraham story anew each generation.

Christians also believe in a form of human sacrifice --what else is Jesus on the Cross? So there can be some very dark aspects to the biblical stories when we view them as adults and not as children in Sunday school.  We can put them in historical context -- as I usually do, explaining that human sacrifice was considered "normal" in many ancient cultures -- but if it is all just ancient history, then the Bible becomes just another tome gathering dust on the shelf.

But maybe Aronofsky is not so far off in his interpretation of Noah.  Such a negative reaction could  happen.  It often does happen to people who witness the horrors of war and natural disasters.  We are still getting over watching the Twin Towers explode and fall on 3000+ people.  So what must have been the impact on Noah after listening to millions drown?  Perhaps he has a form of survivor guilt, coming to feel he had no right to survive, that to survive is to go against fate, to go against God's will. This certainly happens in real life.  There are cases from the Holocaust where only one or two members of an entire family -- an entire village even! -- survived.  Some people managed to pick up and move on with their lives.  But others went mad, even committing suicide.  All were changed forever by the experience.

So as we watch this movie, we can begin to ask ourselves some serious questions.  How do we really know God's will?  When is it time to question a harsh judgement?  How do we move past the horror and find healing? Noah understands justice, but he has to learn to understand mercy -- and that, to me, is the whole point of the end of the movie.

As the Passover Haggadah says, each person must imagine him/herself as if he/she were a slave in Egypt, and he/she were personally freed. That's not just history, that's emotional -- to really feel what it is to be a slave, or, in this case, to be Noah, who is ordered to save his family and let the rest of humanity die.  Aronofsky put himself in Noah's place and came up with the dark side -- but also the light of hope.  Because we know from the beginning how the story will end: hope wins out, humanity lives on.  But not until Noah reconciles himself to that will the rainbow appear -- which is why we do not see it until the final scene, where he passes his legacy on to his grandchildren.

*  *  *

FURTHER READING:

Google "Noah movie Jewish" to bring up dozens of articles about the Jewish sources of  Aronofsky's interpretation of the story.  Here are a few to start:

"The "Terror" of Noah: How Darren Aronofsky interprets the Bible in The Atlantic.  This three-page article goes into some depth about how Aronofsky has been fascinated by Noah since childhood, how he saw the horror in the story early on, how he views the Bible and midrash, how he developed the idea for the movie, etc.  One of the best interviews with him online. For a blow by blow explanation of midrashic details in the movie (snakeskins, magic swords, Nephilim "rock giants," a barge-like Ark, and such), see my review on Amazon - and all the discussion, pro and con, that it has evoked (smile).

For a similar rundown from a Christian perspective, see The Noah Movie Controversies: Questions and Answers  by Steven D. Greydanus for the National Catholic Register.

For a good round-up of Jewish reviews and reactions, see The Jewish Roots of and Response to "Noah."

Tsohar: Gem of Noah, Light of Heaven is a very good article explaining the Jewish sources for the glowing mineral that Tubal-Cain's people are mining.

Noah comes to the Big Screen with the help of a Dallas Rabbi  looks at the Jewish sources for the fallen angels, noting, among other things, that six-winged angels are mentioned in Isaiah.

And see also my previous blog post,  From Noah to Moses: An ethical evolution

And just to be "fair and balanced" (to parody Fox News), here are two articles by right-wing fundamentalist Christians who really, really, really hate this movie:

Sympathy for the Devil  by Brian Mattson, who sees the movie as a bunch of heretical gnosticism, and believes that  "Aronofsky did it as an experiment to make fools of us [Christians]: 'You are so ignorant that I can put Noah (granted, it's Russell Crowe!) up on the big screen and portray him literally as the ‘seed of the Serpent’ and you all will watch my studio’s screening and endorse it.'"

Aronofsky's Noah: A panolopy of Jewish Paganism by Joel McDermon.  The title says it all.  This guy hates the Jewish influences in the movie so much that it borders on -- or even crosses the line into -- antisemitism, stating: "And while they [Aronofsky and Handel] say they intended to stick to the text, they do with it what so many Talmudic, Kabbalistic, and/or Hasidic mystic Jews do: twist, torture, and turn the text a thousand ways but what it [the Bible] plainly says."

Dayenu.  Enough.  Time to log off and go do chores.  Peace.

From Noah to Moses: an ethical evolution

Today is the third day of Passover but, ironically, I have spent the last couple days focused more on Noah than Moses -- all because of a recent conversation about Darren Aronofsky's new blockbuster movie, Noah.  Never has a movie so clearly illustrated the vast gap between Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Bible.  Judging from the reviews, it's one of those films you will either love or hate, depending on your theology.

I myself have not yet seen the film.  My wife and I were planning to go today, but then we got buried again by a Minnesota snowstorm, and as of this writing, our road is not plowed yet.  So this post won't be a movie review.  Rather, it's a discussion of the Jewish take on Noah, and why he is not considered to be as great a prophet as Moses. 


Classical depiction of the Ark

Because I have not yet seen the movie, I'll limit myself to the Biblical text (even though the movie does not), as seen through the lens of Jewish commentaries.  But for those who have seen Noah, this might give you some insight into how the Jewish director and his Jewish co-writer (Ari Handel) interpreted the character of Noah in a Jewish light.   (For an excellent compilation of Jewish reactions to the film, see The Jewish Roots of and Responses to Noah.) 

The kiddie version

All of us -- Jews and non-Jews alike -- grew up with the children's story of Noah as a kindly old man caring for animals on a floating zoo in order to save them from extinction.  I myself have used that imagery when talking about modern ecological issues.   So have many environmentalists, religious or not.  It's a beautiful story, and my intent here is not to criticize those who tell it that way.

However, when we look at the biblical text as adults, there are a number of perplexing questions.  The children's story ends with the appearance of the rainbow and all the happy animals leaving the Ark.  We don't talk about how Noah got so drunk afterward that he was lying in the tent in a naked stupor  (Genesis 9:18-23).  Nor do we ask why he didn't try to save  more people, or at least convince them to build their own boats -- or how the neighbors might have reacted to Noah as the crackpot who was building a ship in the middle of the desert.   Nor do we talk much about the unfairness of him cursing his grandson Canaan's descendants for all eternity (Genesis 9:25-27).

Russell Crowe's gritty portrayal of
Noah shows his fallible, human side.
(Photo courtesy of Paramount)

Jewish tradition does address these questions and takes a long hard look at Noah as a fallible human being.  The Torah tells us that he was "righteous in his generation" (Genesis 6:9)  Christians tend to read this as saying that he was a saint.  Judaism takes the opposite view: In his generation he stood out as righteous compared to all the evil people around him, but if he had lived in the time of Abraham, he would have been a nobody.  In the pre-Flood days, the behavioral bar was set so low, it didn't take much to be seen as a righteous man.

Unlike Abraham, who, when told by God that the city of Sodom will be destroyed, argues on behalf of the innocent who will also die, Noah just says, in effect, "Sir, yes sir!" and follows orders without question.  He builds an Ark to save himself, but shows no concern for the rest of humanity -- or the animals not aboard the Ark, for that matter.  This, according to Jewish tradition, is not righteous behavior.  God does not want us to save ourselves and to heck with the rest of the world.  Noah may have been the best "righteous man" God could find in that era, but he was far from perfect. 

We could argue that Abraham had the benefit of learning from Noah's mistakes.  So, when confronted with the same moral dilemma -- although on a smaller scale -- he responds by coming to the defense of the righteous living among the wicked (Genesis 18:24-32). Then he "bargains" with God about how many righteous it would take to save the city.  Abraham stops at "what if there are ten righteous people" because he assumes that Lot's family will make up the quorum.  But only Lot, his wife, and two daughters heed the warning to leave, so the city is destroyed after all.  But at least Abraham tried to save some of the people.

Moses talks with God
through a Burning Bush

Moses, when confronted with a similar challenge, goes even further than Abraham; he argues not only on behalf of the innocent, but on behalf of the guilty as well.   He stands up for the whole community.

The scene is this:  Moses is still up on the mountain, receiving the Torah, while the people below are making and worshipping the Golden Calf idol.  God tells Moses about this blasphemy, and says He will destroy all the people and start a new line with Moses (Exodus 32:7-11). This, on a smaller scale, is the same thing God told Noah:  Let's push the "reset"  button and I'll start over with you.

But Moses reacts differently from Noah.  He doesn't just follow orders, nor does he accept the offer of founding the new chosen line.  Instead, he argues on behalf of all the people -- righteous and sinners alike.  God accepts Moses' plea (or prayer, since he is talking to God) and does not destroy the Israelites, even though they have just committed the most heinous sin of sins by worshipping a false god  (Exodus 32: 12-14).   It is true that some people are later slain by sword or plague, but God makes it clear that "he who has sinned against me, him only will I blot out "(Genesis 32:33).  There is now personal accountability for misdeeds, not collective guilt.

These stories are not about God "making mistakes" or "changing His mind."  It is about the very Jewish idea that God's judgments are not always written in stone, and that, as the Yom Kippur liturgy says, "repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree."  It is about the evolution of human consciousness from self-centeredness to caring about others.  It is about the spiritual power of a real change of heart, and about taking personal responsibility for tikkun olam, "repairing the world." 

Thus we have the following progression:  Noah, when told God will destroy the world but save him and his family, offers no argument on behalf of the world; Abraham, when told God will destroy a city, argues on behalf of the righteous; Moses, when told God will destroy the whole tribe and start over with him, argues on behalf of everybody.  From this we learn that Judaism is about community, not just saving yourself.  And that is why, from a Jewish standpoint, Noah is not considered to be such a great saint.  After the Flood story he is hardly mentioned at all.

So I find myself wondering:  What if Noah had challenged God's desire to wipe out every living thing on the planet? Would God have relented then, as He did with Moses later?  Does Noah bear some responsibility for the destruction of the Flood?  And does this lesson have anything to teach us today about our responsibility to each other, and to the planet?  Do we just sit back and wait for Judgment Day to come and "cleanse" the earth of wickedness, or do we take action in the here and now to "avert the evil decree?"

In Memory of the Golden Toad

Back in the early 1980s, I bought rubber model of a Golden Toad.  The sign on the bin of toy toads said that it was an endangered species -- one that I had never heard of until I saw that display.  It was only found in one small high-altitude area of Costa Rica.   But that wasn't the reason I bought it.  I just thought it would look pretty in a flower pot.

My Golden Toad model
in a pot of parsley

 Over the years, my model toad "lived" in pots of petunias, parsley, marigolds, and many other plants, both in the garden and on the windowsill.   It got a bit faded over the years, and is now more of a yellow toad, but it still graces my garden.

This past summer, my 4-year-old grandson noticed it and asked me where I got the "yellow frog."  I told him it was a model of a real species of toad, and went on the Internet to find some photos.  Sadly, we learned that the Golden Toad is now extinct, and has been since 1989.  Several theories for the extinction have been advanced, but the main culprit seems to have been global warming.

In the spring of 1987, an American biologist who had come to the cloud forest specifically to study the toads counted fifteen hundred of them in temporary breeding pools. That spring was unusually warm and dry and most of the pools evaporated before the tadpoles in them had time to mature. The following year, only one male was seen at what previously had been the major breeding site. Seven males and two females were seen at a second site a few miles away. The year after, on May 15, 1989, the last sighting of only one male occurred. No golden toad has been seen since then.

Photo of a male Golden Toad
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

When I compare my model with a photo of a real Golden Toad, I can see it really wasn't very accurate.  Most likely, the factory used the same mold as for an American Toad, only with golden plastic.  The real thing was smoother and not so squat.  Still, the little rubber toad serves as a reminder -- a memorial if you will -- to a beautiful species that is forever gone.

To some people, the loss of a toad in a faraway rain forest might not seem very important in the grand scheme of things.  But scientists tell us that thousands more species are endangered, many go extinct each year.  Unlike Noah, we seem to be unable to gather all of God's creatures onto our flimsy Ark.  And, as the T-shirt says, "Extinction is forever."  The loss of any species greatly diminishes our world.

Do animals have souls (part II)

In a previous post  (go to part 1) I discussed the question of whether or not animals have souls according to Jewish theology, and then defined five different Hebrew words that are commonly translated "soul." In this essay, I will explore the question of why Western society became so callous towards animals, and attempt to show that this is not due to Judaism!

There is a disturbing tendency in the animal rights and ecology movements to blame everything negative on "monotheism" or "The Patriarchy" or "the Jews" without really understanding what Judaism actually teaches. Very often, the popular conception of what is "Jewish" is about as accurate as the Hollywood Wild West portrayal of what is "Indian." So we need to take a second look at some basic Jewish teachings before we can understand how modern society got off track.

Consider the story of the Garden of Eden, a teaching story that is originally Jewish and comes from the Torah (which is the same text as the first five books of the Bible.) The story of Noah and the Ark also comes from the Torah. So right away, we can see that Judaism gave us two of the most basic images about caring for the environment -- images that are frequently cited by modern environmental movements, both religious and secular. These stories are also basic as to how Jews are supposed to relate to animals.

Adam and Eve lived in harmony with animals in the Garden, and were told to care for the Garden. So their role was to be stewardship, not conquest.   Adam also names the animals. Now, usually this is interpreted as naming the species, but there is another, deeper way to look at this. When you name an animal, you take responsibility for it, and you also develop a connection to it. There is an old adage among farmers to "never name something you are going to eat" -- and there are many stories of farm children who did name a cow or goat and were then unable to eat it.  Naming an animal personalizes it and makes it into an individual. So clearly, Adam and Eve did not see animals as mere "things."

The Garden of Eden is also the Jewish metaphor for the afterlife.  Considering the fact that Eden has animals in it, this implies that animals must have some form of afterlife also.  Otherwise, how could the lion lie down with the lamb, as foretold by Isaiah?

Noah was instructed to build the Ark to save all the animal species from an impending catastrophe. Whether you take the story literally or symbolically, the message is clear: God values every living species on earth, and expects us to take care of them.

The Midrash (an ancient set of Jewish commentaries) tells us that Noah and his family provided each species with the specific food it needed, caring for the diurnal species during the day and the nocturnal species during the night.  [The predators, it is said in the traditional Jewish commentaries, reverted to drinking milk on the Ark -- perhaps not very scientific, but a good way of explaining why they didn't eat the other animals. Even in modern times, there are cases where artificial nutrient mixes (such as KMR kitten formula) are used to feed and/or rehabilitate animals in the absence of their natural food.]

The Ark was, in a sense, a return to the harmony of Eden for the duration of the Flood.   After the Flood, humans were permitted to eat meat, but only after humanely slaughtering them.   Judaism later went further, permitting only domesticated species as food.  Eating exotic species was forbidden, as was hunting for sport.  In later years, the rabbis would also forbid their followers from attending the "games" at the Roman arena.  To this day, Jews do not, as a rule, attend or participate in blood sports.

There were no factory farms in those days.  Herds and flocks grazed freely in the open, as it was meant to be.   Nor was meat eaten every day.  It was something served on special occasions, such as the Sabbath, or when Abraham told Sarah to prepare food for the three visitors when he was camped under the trees at Mamre.

Both of these stories, Eden and the Ark,  treat animals as living, feeling beings.  So do many lines in the Psalms and other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, as I discussed in Part I of this series.  That being the case, why has Western society -- which claims to be based on the Bible -- become so callous about the treatment of animals on factory farms in recent times?

The answer, I believe, lies in the rise of secularism, and most particularly with a 17th-century French philosopher named Rene Descartes (pronounced day-CART.)   Known as "the father of modern philosophy," Descartes is best known for his famous saying: "I think, therefore I am." But what is not as well-known is this:  He believed that only humans have the ability to think and feel.  To Descartes, animals not only did not have souls, they were incapable of feeling emotions or pain. Animals were mere things, unthinking automatons with no consciousness whatsoever. The cries of an animal in pain, to Descartes, were nothing more that the squeaking of a poorly-maintained machine. To prove his point, he once nailed his own dog to the door and ignored its cries of anguish.

Descartes was not Jewish, and his ideas about animals are not in line with Jewish teachings. Nor are they in line with Christianity.  The Roman Catholic Church condemned his books and forbade reading them.  Nor did they have much influence on Jews -- at first. When Descartes was teaching, Jews in Europe were ghettoized and not accepted at the universities where he lectured.  But ideas will spread across all barriers, so that, by the time you get to the late 1700s, Cartesianism was starting to filter into the Jewish community along with the secular "Enlightenment" movement.

This explains why Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (d. 1810), the Breslover Hasidic Rebbe, told his followers not to study philosophy.  I had always been puzzled over this, this, because Maimonides was a philosopher, Nachmanides was a philosopher, so were Ibn Ezra and Luzatto  and a lot of other classical commentators -- and we study them, right?  But after reading about Descartes, I realized that what Rebbe Nachman was talking about was secular philosophy.  He must have realized that this type of thinking would lead us away from respecting God and the creation.  As indeed it has.

Cartesianism opened the way to factory farms and other abuses of animals we see today.  Jews, in turn, are now mostly urban people, who are cut off from the land, farming, and the process by which their food is produced.   (For more this, and on re-connecting Judaism with nature, see my video, "Earth and Torah")  Most Jews are unaware that the only difference between kosher meat and non-kosher meat is the method of slaughter.  The animals themselves come from the same industrialized factory farm and feedlot system as non-kosher meat.  The days of our ancestors raising their own chickens and personally taking them to the shochet (kosher slaughterer) are long gone.

It is for this reason that I believe that vegetarianism is the highest form of kosher diet today.  I do not fault my ancestors for eating meat.  There were times in Jewish history, when we lived in harsh desert or northern climates, where vegetarianism would have been next to impossible.  God knew this would happen, and so did not outrightly forbid eating meat.   But nowadays it is easier to be a vegetarian, and with modern nutritional science, it is possible to do it with a balanced diet and and remain healthy.  Many would now argue that vegetarianism is more healthy, given all the diseases we now know are associated with meat consumption. But the bottom line, for me, is this:  Animals do have feelings, and should not be raised as if they were nothing but food-producing machines.   That is not the Jewish way.

(See also my 15-minute video, "Raising Holy Sparks,"  about the kabbalistic "energy" of eating, and how it relates to the souls of animals.)